The Big Picture
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be worrisome. It implies that people with whom we have moral
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disagreements— whether it’s Hitler, the Taliban, or schoolyard bullies who
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beat up smaller children— aren’t wrong in the same sense that it’s wrong to 25
deny Darwinian evolution or the expansion of the universe. We can’t do an
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experiment, or point to data, or construct a syllogism, or write a stinging
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blog post, that would persuade them of why their actions are bad. And if
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that’s true, why should they ever stop?
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But that’s how the world is. We should recognize that our desire for an
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objective grounding for morality creates a cognitive bias, and should com-
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pensate by being especially skeptical of any claims in that direction.
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Rules and Consequences
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braham heard God commanding him to take Isaac, his only son,
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to the region of Moriah and sacrifice him there as a burnt offering.
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The next morning Abraham and Isaac, along with two servants
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and a donkey, began the arduous three- day journey. Arriving at the site,
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Abraham built an altar and arranged the wood atop it. He bound his son
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and drew a heavy knife. At the last moment he faltered; he could not bring
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himself to sacrifice his boy. Isaac, however, had seen the despair in his fa-
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ther’s eyes. By the time they returned to his mother, Sarah, Isaac had com-
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pletely lost his faith.
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This isn’t the usual telling of the Abraham and Isaac story, familiar from
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Genesis. It’s one of four alternative imaginings offered by Søren Kierke-
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gaard in his book Fear and Trembling. In the original, God intercedes at the
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last minute and offers Abraham a ram to sacrifice in place of his son. Kier-
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kegaard suggests a number of different twists, each harrowing in its own
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way: Abraham tricks Isaac into thinking Abraham is a monster, so Isaac
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wouldn’t lose faith in God; Abraham sees a ram and decides to sacrifice it
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rather than his son, in contravention of his orders; Abraham begs God to
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forgive him that he would have even contemplated sacrificing his son; and
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Abraham falters at the last moment, causing Isaac to lose faith.
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There are many readings of the tale of Abraham and Isaac. A traditional
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explanation casts it as a lesson about the strength of faith: God wanted to
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test Abraham’s loyalty by making the strongest possible demand. Martin
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Luther held that Abraham’s willingness to kill Isaac was correct, given one’s
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fundamental need to defer to God’s will. Immanuel Kant held that Abra-
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ham should have realized that there are no conditions under which it would
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have been justified to sacrifice his son— and therefore the command could
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not actually have come from God. Kierkegaard, concerned that a prolifera-
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tion of interpretations was diluting the impact of this clash of apparent
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absolutes, wanted to emphasize the impossibility of finding a simple answer
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to Abraham’s dilemma, and highlight the demands placed by true faith.
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From a broader perspective, the story highlights the issue of competing
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moral commitments: what do we do when something that seems utterly
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wrong at a visceral level (killing your own son) runs into a foundational
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rule to which you are devoted (obeying God’s word)? When it is not clear
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what is right and wrong, what are the most basic principles that should
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ultimately decide?
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•
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In modern manifestations of moral argument, hearing commands
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from God doesn’t have the same force it once did. But the fundamental
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dichotomy lives on. The descendant of Abraham’s dilemma in our secular-
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ized, technological world is something called the trol ey problem.
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Introduced by philosopher Philippa Foot in the 1960s, the trolley-
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problem thought experiment aims to sharpen the conflict between compet-
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ing moral sentiments. A group of five people is tied to some trolley tracks.
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Unfortunately, a speeding trolley has lost its brakes, and is barreling toward
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them. If no action is taken, they will surely die. But you have the option of
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taking an action: you are standing by a switch that will divert the trolley
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onto another track. This alternate track, by unfortunate coincidence, has a
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single person tied down on it, who will surely be killed if you pull the
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switch. ( Trolley- track security is remarkably lax in this hypothetical world.)
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What do you do?
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It’s not quite sacrificing- your- only- son- because-of-God’s-command level
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stuff, but the dilemma is real. On the one hand, there is a choice between
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five people dying and one person dying. All else being equal, it would seem
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to be better, or at least less bad, if only one person died. On the other hand,
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you have to actively do something in order to divert the train. Instinctively,
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if the trolley barrels forward and kills the five people, it’s not really our
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fault, whereas if we choose of our own volition to pull the switch, we bear
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the responsibility for the death of the one person on the other track.
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This is where we see Bill and Ted’s “Be excellent to each other” falling
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short when it comes to providing the basis for a fully articulated ethical
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system. Moral quandaries are real, even if they are usually not as stark as the
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trolley prob
lem. How much of our income should we spend on our own
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pleasure, versus putting it toward helping the less fortunate? What are the
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best rules governing marriage, abortion, and gender identity? How do we
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balance the goal of freedom against that of security?
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As Abraham learned, having an absolute moral standard such as God
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can be extraordinarily challenging. But without God, there is no such stan-
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dard, and that is challenging in its own way. The dilemmas are still there,
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and we have to figure out a way to face them. Nature alone is no help, as we
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can’t extract ought from is; the universe doesn’t pass moral judgments.
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And yet we must live and act. We are collections of vibrating quantum
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fields, held together in persistent patterns by feeding off of ambient free
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energy according to impersonal and uncaring laws of nature, and we are
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also human beings who make choices and care about what happens to
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ourselves and to others. What’s the best way to think about how we
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should live?
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Philosophers find it useful to distinguish between ethics and meta- ethics.
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Ethics is about what is right and what is wrong, what moral guidelines we
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should adopt for our own behavior and that of others. A statement like
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“killing puppies is wrong” belongs to ethics. Meta- ethics takes a step back,
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and asks what it means to say that something is right or wrong, and why we
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should adopt one set of guidelines rather than some other set. “Our system
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of ethics should be based on improving the well- being of conscious crea-
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tures” is a meta- ethical claim, from which “killing puppies is wrong” might
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be derived.
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Poetic naturalism has little to say about ethics, other than perhaps for a
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few inspirational remarks. But it does have something to say about meta-
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ethics, namely: our ethical systems are things that are constructed by us
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human beings, not discovered out there in the world, and should be
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evaluated accordingly. To help with that kind of evaluation, we can con-
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template some of the choices we have when it comes to ethics.
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Two ideas serve as a useful starting point: consequentialism and deontol-
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ogy. At the risk of vastly oversimplifying thousands of years of argument
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and contemplation, consequentialists believe that the moral implications of
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an action are determined by what consequences that action causes, while
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deontologists feel that actions are morally right or wrong in and of them-
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selves, not because of what effects they may lead to. “The greatest good for
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the greatest number,” the famous maxim of utilitarianism, is a classic con-
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sequentialist way of thinking. “Do unto others as you would have them do
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unto you,” the Golden Rule, is an example of deontology in action. Deon-
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tology is all about rules. (The word “deontology” comes from the Greek
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deon, for “duty,” while “ontology” comes from the Greek on, for “being.”
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Despite the similarity of the words, the two ideas are unrelated.)
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Bill and Ted were deontologists. Had they been consequentialists, their
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motto would have been something like “Make the world a more excellent
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place.”
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The problem is that both consequentialism and deontology seem per-
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fectly reasonable at first glance. “The greatest good for the greatest number”
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sounds like a splendid idea, as does “Do unto others as you would have
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them do unto you.” The point of the trolley problem is that these approaches
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can come into conflict. The idea that it would be reasonable to sacrifice one
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person in order to save five people is consequentialist at its core, while our
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reluctance to actually pull the switch stems from deep deontological
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impulses— diverting the trolley and killing an innocent person just seems
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wrong, even if it does save lives. The standard moral sentiments of most
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people include both consequentialist and deontological impulses.
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The operation of these competing ethical inclinations can be traced to
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different parts of our babbling brains. Our minds have a System 1 that is
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built on heuristics, instincts, and visceral reactions, as well as a System 2
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that is responsible for cognition and higher- level thoughts. Roughly speak-
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ing, System 1 tends to be responsible for our deontological impulses, and
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System 2 kicks in when we start thinking as consequentialists. In the words
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of psychologist Joshua Greene, we not only have “thinking fast and slow”;
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we also have “morality fast and slow.” System 2 thinks we should pull the
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switch, while System 1 is appalled by the idea.
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Philosophers have thought up many modifications of the original trolley
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problem. A famous one is the “footbridge problem,” proposed by Judith
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Jarvis Thomson. Let’s say you are a committed consequentialist, and are
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sure you would pull the switch in the original problem. But this time there
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is no switch: rather, the only way to stop the trolley from killing the five un-
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fortunate people on the track is to push a large man off of a footbridge and
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into the path of the trolley. (All such thought experiments imagine we are
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able to predict the future with uncanny accuracy; this one also assumes that
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you yourself are too tiny to stop the trolley on its course, so self- sacrifice is
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not an option.)
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As before, either one person will die or five will die. To a consequential-
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ist, there is no difference between the footbridge scenario and the original
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trolley problem. But to a deon
tologist there might be. In the first problem
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we are not actively trying to kill the one person on the side track; that’s just
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an unfortunate repercussion of our attempts to save the five people. But up
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on that footbridge, we are purposely forcing someone to their death. Our
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emotions recoil at the prospect; it’s one thing to pull a switch, quite another
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to push someone off of a bridge.
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Greene has studied volunteers hooked up to an MRI machine while
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being asked to contemplate various moral dilemmas. As expected, contem-
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plation of “personal” situations (like pushing someone off of a bridge) led
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to increased activity in areas of the brain that are associated with emotions
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and social reasoning. “Impersonal” situations (like pulling a switch) en-
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gaged the parts of the brain associated with cognition and higher reason-
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ing. Different modules within ourselves spring to life when we’re forced to
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deal with slightly different circumstances. When it comes to morality, the
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unruly parliament that constitutes our brain includes both deontological
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and consequentialist factions.
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Sticking someone inside an imposing medical scanner and asking them
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to consider philosophical thought experiments might not tell us much
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about how that person would actually react in the situation described. The
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real world is messy— are you sure you could stop the trolley by pushing that
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guy off the footbridge?— and people’s predictions about how they would
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act in stressful situations aren’t always reliable. That’s okay; our goal here
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isn’t to understand how people behave, it’s to get a better idea for how they
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think about how they should behave.
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Consequentialism and deontology aren’t the only kinds of ethical sys-
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tems we can consider. Another popular approach is virtue ethics, which
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traces its roots back to Plato and Aristotle. If deontology is about what you
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do, and consequentialism is about what happens, virtue ethics is about who
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you are. To a virtue ethicist, what matters isn’t so much how many people
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you save by diverting a trolley, or the intrinsic good of your actions; what
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matters is whether you made your decision on the basis of virtues such as